Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

Cass backed up the stairs at that point, her face burning.

Was she overprotective?

Yes, probably; but how could she help it, after everything they had experienced and seen?

And yes, Ruthie was quiet…but a few months ago she didn’t talk at all. Cass had been happy that she was simply talking again. But these few words from Jasmine threw a pall over her progress.

The doubts magnified and escalated all that day. It wasn’t the first time her parenting had been called into question; it was far from the worst time. So why did it hurt so much now? As Cass sat with Smoke late that afternoon, holding his hand, smoothing the hair out of his face, adjusting his covers, her mind reviewed every interaction she’d had with the others. The way they instinctively knew how to fill the gaps in the conversation that always left her tongue-tied…had they been thinking she was awkward all along? The way Ingrid always brought a new book for Ruthie from the library-was it because she didn’t think Cass would do it on her own? The games Dane invited Ruthie to play-had Ingrid put him up to it, out of pity for her awkward daughter and her inadequate mothering?

By dinnertime, she had a stomachache and her face felt tight. As she carried their tray of food and walked with Ruthie across the lawn, headed for the table she usually shared with the other women, she saw Dor sitting alone at another. His meal was finished, his cutlery laid across his plate and half a cup of water in his hand. He was watching Sammi, who was talking to a group of teens over at the volleyball net.

In a split-second decision she went and sat with Dor instead.

Sliding her tray on the table across from him, she gave him the best smile she could muster.

“Okay if I sit here?” she said.

Dor looked surprised. “Hell yeah. I thought you were avoiding me.” Then, as if sensing he’d made a mistake, his face softened. “If you hadn’t come to me, I would have hunted you down, Cass.”

“I don’t belong here.” The words, stark and frightened, were out of her mouth before she could stop herself. Worse yet, her eyes stung with unshed tears. Cass covered her mouth and looked down at the table. Someone had covered it with a flowered cloth-someone, no doubt, who had no trouble making and keeping friends, someone who was comfortable in the social milieu here in New Eden.

Dor smiled ruefully and held up his hands for Cass to see the cuts and scrapes that covered his forearms. He’d spent the day helping to remove barbed-wire fencing from a section of the lower island; they’d been using it to cultivate kaysev, but as Cass had already seen for herself on a walk with Ruthie, they had barely cleared the land since New Eden had been settled.

Pulling the barbed wire, like hauling trash or tilling the earth, was a job for the brawny, but not one that was prized. Such jobs were never given to council members. Despite New Eden’s insistence on a cooperative society, it was clear that some job assignments were more coveted than others and distributed according to the council’s whims. And Dor had started at the bottom. He didn’t have the same reputation in New Eden as he had in the Box.

“Ahhh…hell.” Dor’s hands sought hers and drew them together, holding them tightly. “Come on, girl, don’t go soft on me now.”

Blinking, Cass took a chance and peeked at him. His dark, scarred face was shadowed with concern. His brows were lowered. He’d cut his silver-tinged black hair since coming to this settlement, and it now cleared the collar of his work shirt, though the front still fell in his eyes. The thin wire loops in his ears and the tattoos that wound up both arms-things that had never looked out of place in the Box-seemed a little too edgy here, a little provocative. Maybe that was why he sat alone, a fact Cass hadn’t bothered to consider until just this minute.

Neither one of them fit in here.

“Sammi’s making friends,” Cass said lamely, after Dor finally relaxed his grip on her hands.

“Ruthie too.”

Just like that, they acknowledged what neither had said aloud: New Eden was a good place for children. And that had to be enough.

“I just…I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that the others all knew each other already. I mean, Ingrid and Suzanne and Jasmine and all. They’re nice to me, but sometimes…”

“Don’t let them get to you,” Dor said. “They’re jealous. I mean, look at you.”

Cass looked up in surprise, found Dor’s eyes intent on her. They were the near-ebony that always signaled intensity, the shade of Dor’s strong emotion, and he stared without blinking into her eyes, and then let his gaze travel down to her mouth, and it was almost a physical sensation, as though he were touching her instead of just watching her, and Cass felt the stirring that she thought had not followed her to this place, the hunger for touch that had been driven from her by the terror of almost losing Smoke.

And thinking of Dor touching her lips led to memories of him kissing her. They’d made love twice on the journey that took them from the Box to Colima. No. That wasn’t right-they’d fucked twice. They’d seized on each other out of desperation, terror, need, hopelessness, anger, slammed their bodies into each other as death threatened and the world yawed crazily on its axis. They’d kept each other going, no more and no less, and wasn’t that over when it was over? Wasn’t that the nature of the deal they’d never discussed out loud-to get each other through, and then leave it, then never speak of it again?

“You’re beautiful, Cass,” Dor said, and only then did Cass realize that he’d only loosened his grip on her hands, not released them, and he laced his fingers through hers and caressed her palms with his thumbs. The sensation went straight to her core, searing, ignited from a spark to a roaring flame with no slow build. “Every woman, every man, that’s the first thing they think when they see you.”

His words were a buzz in her ear, confirmation of things she didn’t want to hear. These were things she didn’t want to know. They were a crushing rejection of the fragile hope she’d nurtured, that she could be just another mom in just another town, raising a nice girl and having nice friends.

Dor must have seen her expression slip, because his hands went still, he stopped touching her, pulled away. “What did I say?” he asked urgently, not unkindly.

Nothing, only don’t stop touching me. Nothing, only-please-make me forget again.

“Tonight-” Cass swallowed, nearly lost her nerve. “Tonight, after Ruthie goes down…”

“What? What do you need?”

“Take me somewhere,” Cass said miserably. “Alone.”

And he did.

THERE EXISTED ON the survivors’ islands one pickup and one panel van, a motorcycle, a small ATV with a trailer for hauling fuel, Nathan’s little hybrid and a dented Accord, all of which were maintained by Sharon and Elsa, two women who’d met at WyoTech and worked at a Toyota dealership in Sonora until riots and crashes decimated most of the vehicles on the road. A hasty midnight session of the New Eden council divided the vehicles’ cargo and passenger space among the eligible citizens, following a very specific set of improvised guidelines. Communal supplies would receive top priority: medicine, water, prepared food. Mothers and children would ride at least some of the time, as would the elderly, the sick, the disabled.

Seventy of them and four passenger vehicles. Everyone knew that meant they would be able to take very little. Cass looked around the room, knowing that the few sentimental things she clung to would only weigh them down. Elsewhere in the house, she could hear Ingrid and Suzanne and Jasmine, throwing what they could into backpacks.